


On Living Again

by alexdamien



Category: Saint Seiya
Genre: M/M, Romance, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:29:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26527513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexdamien/pseuds/alexdamien
Summary: Slices of life snapshots for the moments when Shion and Aioros are brought back and have to wrestle with the emotions that a second go at life bring them.
Relationships: Aries Shion/Libra Dohko, Gemini Saga/Sagittarius Aiolos
Comments: 5
Kudos: 31





	On Living Again

Shion pulled Aioros’ chin and forced him to look up at the vaulted ceiling of the hall.

“Blink a couple times and then stare straight up,” he ordered, examining his eyes.

Aioros, siting on a stone slab in the middle of the hall, obeyed.

“I feel fine,” he said, still looking up, unblinking.

Shion sighed and let go of his chin.

“Really?” he asked, skeptically.

“Really!” said Aioros, giving him his brightest smile.

“I don’t believe you,” said the patriarch, narrowing his eyes at him. “How does being thirty feels?”

“So far, better than dying at fourteen,” said Aioros with a laugh. Shion rolled his eyes.

“It’s good that you’re taking your resurrection with humor, but-“ started Shion.

“The kid says he’s fine!” yelled Dohko from the entrance, stalking inside with one basked under one arm and another smaller basked under the other. “You’ve been checking him up for so long. Just let him go live his second go at life already. He’ll be an even older man by the time you let him go.”

“And who let you inside?” asked Shion.

Dohko gave the basket to Aioros. “Here are some pork buns for you kids,” he said, pointedly ignoring Shion. “Now go before he chains you up in here.”

Aioros grabbed the basket and jumped off the stone slab.

“Thank you old master Dohko!” he called back, running out of the hall laughing.

“Don’t exert yourself too much!” yelled Shion after him.

Dohko shoved a pork bun into his mouth.

“You let him live and come here or I won’t give you anymore,” he said.

Shion bit off a piece of the bun and the taste convinced him to just let it all go and follow Dohko out into the garden at the back of Star Hill. As they walked out, he realized that the gardens didn’t look the way they had back when he was patriarch. He noticed several arcs with roses and other flowers blooming in the warm summer night. There were so many more flowers now, and the sight of them made him smile.

Dohko spread a white cloth over the grass and set down the basked. Shion blinked, and noticed that they overlooked the descending houses of the sanctuary. The same sight that they’d seen that last day before Dohko left for the five peaks. An old sadness stirred in his heart as he remembered that day. A sadness that had waited for centuries.

“What are you doing there?” asked Dohko, sitting on the cloth and looking up at Shion. “Come on, sit down here.”

Shion looked down at him, knowing that the darknes would await him if he didn’t ask now.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the thing…that Athena did to your heart?” he asked.

Dohko’s smile softened, and he looked away, busying himself by rummaging in the basket.

“I guess…I didn’t want to,” he said, but Shion heard the trails of sadness entwined in his voice.

“Jackass,” he said, and sat down net to him on the cloth, with the basket full of buns between them.

Dohko laughed. The laughter with the same sadness that his voice had had back when they had surveyed what was left of the sanctuary after the holy war.

“I’m sorry,” he said, pulling out a small jar of wine and a couple glasses and pouring drinks for the both of them. !I just didn’t want to tell you that I would save my youth and my years and that I wouldn’t be able to give you a single one of them because they had all been claimed by Athena. What was the sense in that? In telling you that I loved you but couldn’t give you a single day of my life? So I just…wanted to leave…”

Shion looked down at his half eaten bun. The image of it blurred, and he realized his eyes were filling with tears.

Because he understood. In the end…it had been better that way. So many choices that they’d taken. They had been the right ones. They had demanded that they renounce every single day of their lives, but they had been the right choices.

“I’m sorry,” repeated Dohko, reaching out to thumb away the tears escaping from the corner’s of Shion’s eyes.

“Idiot,” said Shion, laughing. Then he leaned towards him, and grabbed at the front of his shirt. “You really are such an idiot and…I guess I am too…”

They kissed.

* * *

Aioros skipped down the stairs towards the house of Sagittarius, basket in one hand, and a half eaten bun in the other. The fresh night air smelled like incoming rain and a certain humidity that he hadn’t realized he had missed until the scent hit his nose.

The cold air upon his face, the smell of the earth, all those little things that didn’t exist in the unending hell of death, he was remembering them one by one and his heart seemed unable to take in all of the emotions that those sensations caused in his chest.

So he skipped down, one step at a time, an easy smile on his lips while he chewed on a bun that tasted sweet and salty and like the most delicious thing he had ever tasted in his life, even if most of his memories were only of death.

Music drifted to his ears and he stopped in his tracks, looking around for where it came from. He followed the beat towards the trees that flanked the great staircase that ran through the houses of the sanctuary.

The scent of rain strengthened.

He slipped through the trees, among the bushes, the scents that drifted to his nose shifting, now turning to green. The music grew louder, and now among the music he heard voices, so he slowed down, and jumped up among the tree branches, hiding among the leaves, his movements hidden among the rustling of the wind that danced through the trees.

Up ahead, he saw the shapes of several people. He recognized Aphrodite’s lustrous hair, Deathmask’s laughter, and Shura’s whispering. Intrigued, his smile grew with his curiosity as he slipped in closer.

The laughter up ahead, then stopped, and even the music seemed less upbeat.

“Found you. Why aren’t you doing guards?” said Saga’s voice, among them, and Aioros blinked.

He jumped through the branches, moving closer until he saw Saga standing in front of the others who sat around a small black box that played the music that he had heard.

“When did you become so stuck up?” asked Deathmask with a laugh to his voice.

Aphrodite snickered.

“You don’t have to pretend to be patriarch anymore,” he said.

Saga clenched his fists. Aioros jumped down from the tree right next to them, his smile turning sharper.

“Hey, so this is what you all were doing while I was dead? Sneaking around and dancing?” he laughed, looking at them all.

The three jumped up from the ground and took a step back away from him.

“A-Aioros…we…,”started Shura.

Aioros grabbed one of the buns in his basket and shoved it into his mouth. Then he gave one to all three of them, who took it with pale faces and shaking hands, as if they were seeing a ghost. Which in a way they were, and the thought made Aioros laugh.

“This is very fun, but it’s time to go man your posts. Now, off your go,” he told them. They looked down, embarrassed, and he saw in them the boys they had been back then, over ten years ago. They turned around and started to leave.

Saga saw them leave, and he looked back at Aioros for a moment. Then, he made to leave too.

“Hey, you get a bun too. They’re good!” he said, holding out a bun towards him

Saga stared at it for a moment, then lowered his eyes.

“…You don’t have to be nice to me,” he said.

Aioros shoved the bun into his mouth.

“Nobody has to be nice to one another, but life’s better like that,” he said, smiling. “And I’d like…I’d like to enjoy life.”

Saga blinked, surprised. Then he bit off a piece of the bun and looked down at it. Aioros crouched down to grab the small black box playing music.

“This is really neat,” he said, looking at it. “I think I’ll ask Shion for one of these.”

Saga crouched down next to him. The song on the box ended and another one started. Overhead, thunder flashed, warning of the incoming rain.

“Aioros?” whispered Saga, and the softness in his voice made his heart jump. The sound of it brought him back to that time when they had been little more than children with hopes and desires and a view of the future that wasn’t tainted by blood and death. “I’m…sorry Aioros. Everything I did…”

But Aioros didn’t want to hear him. He didn’t want to think about death or hell or the day he had seen that power was worth more than his life. More than their duty. More than their gods.

“Everything you did was a long time ago. Let’s stay on today, ok?” he said, and pressed a soft kiss to the edge of Saga’s mouth. “Let’s make up for all those lost years. Let’s just live again.”


End file.
